As Comic-Con nears decision time as to whether to stay or go, San Diego’s hospitality industry is scrambling to address concerns that high room rates at some hotels could thwart the city’s chances of holding on to the mammoth four-day convention.

Facing competition from Los Angeles and Anaheim, San Diego Convention Center officials are working with local hoteliers to persuade them to offer more competitive convention rates in the hope of convincing Comic-Con International to remain in its 40-year-long home.

Although the pop-culture extravaganza is contracted to stay in San Diego through 2012, Comic-Con is exploring options for 2013 and beyond because it has largely outgrown San Diego’s bayfront convention center. The show regularly sells out weeks in advance, and there is a long waiting list of vendors interested in exhibiting at the convention.

Eager to address Comic-Con’s concerns, the San Diego Convention Center Corp. last month offered a three-year proposal that would double the number of discounted hotel rooms set aside for the convention and provide free meeting space within the waterfront hotels.

The city, however, apparently has more work to do if it wants to retain the event.

“We’re hearing very clearly from Comic-Con that hotel room rates are an issue in our ability to stay competitive for the business for 2013 on, so we’ve redoubled our efforts to ensure that the hotel community understands how important this piece is to our successful bid,” said convention center spokesman Steven Johnson. “We don’t want to lose such a lucrative, annual piece of business in this economic environment, so we’re using every piece of information we hear back (from Comic-Con) to refine the bid and address their concern.”

The city was anxious enough about the prospect of Comic-Con heading north that San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders this week convened a meeting of tourism industry representatives to make sure hoteliers were willing to do everything they could to beat competitors who can offer more convention space and lower hotel rates.

Local tourism officials stress that Comic-Con is like no other convention, attracting 126,000 attendees yearly, along with worldwide media attention driven by its close ties with Hollywood studios and movie directors who depend on the gathering to gauge fan interest in their projects. Some liken it to hosting a Super Bowl every year, because of its high profile and economic impact worth tens of millions of dollars.

“Given the decision by Comic-Con will be made in a few weeks, the mayor wanted to bring all the players in one room so he could know if there was anything additional that could be done to increase our chances of keeping the convention,” said Darren Pudgil, a spokesman for Sanders.

In the area of room rates, Comic-Con officials were concerned that some of the hotels that had committed to offer discounted rates exclusive to attendees had exceeded a $300 nightly threshold, Johnson said. In other cases, some downtown properties that normally offer more moderate prices were proposing convention rates comparable to what a four- or five-star hotel would charge.